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Category Archives for "Networking"

Beware: Ansible Reorders List Values in Loops

TL&DR: Ansible might decide to reorder list values in a loop parameter, resulting in unexpected order of execution and (in my case) totally borked device configuration.

A bit of a background first: I’m using an Ansible playbook within netsim-tools to deploy initial device configurations. Among other things, that playbook deploys configuration snippets for numerous configuration modules, and the order of deployment is absolutely crucial. For example, you cannot activate BGP neighbors in Labeled Unicast (BGP-LU) address family (mpls module) before configuring BGP neighbors (bgp module).

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Beware: Ansible Reorders List Values in Loops

TL&DR: Ansible might decide to reorder list values in a loop parameter, resulting in unexpected order of execution and (in my case) totally borked device configuration.

A bit of a background first: I’m using an Ansible playbook within netlab to deploy initial device configurations. Among other things, that playbook deploys configuration snippets for numerous configuration modules, and the order of deployment is absolutely crucial. For example, you cannot activate BGP neighbors in Labeled Unicast (BGP-LU) address family (mpls module) before configuring BGP neighbors (bgp module).

Read more …

Tech Bytes: The Advantages Of Singtel SD-WAN For Cloud Access (Sponsored)

On today's Tech Bytes with sponsor Singtel, we look at SD-WAN as a critical network feature for cloud access, including the use of overlays to simplify operations. We also discuss why organizations might consider a service provider for SD-WAN and dig into Singtel's SD-WAN offering.

The post Tech Bytes: The Advantages Of Singtel SD-WAN For Cloud Access (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Cisco upgrades target Kubernetes, cloud, and AI/ML

Cisco has added new features to its core cloud and computing packages to better manage and support distributed applications.The enhancements affect Cisco’s Intersight cloud management system, UCS X-Series server and HyperFlex hyperconverged system.The idea is to provide tools that offer flexibility and manageability while increasing performance and reducing the costs of modern cloud-based apps and workloads, said DD Dasgupta, vice president of Cisco’s Cloud & Compute Product Management group. Cisco is extending its Intersight support for Kubernetes, which had managed only Cisco Kubernets and only on-premises. The upgrade, Intersight Kubernetes Service Attached Clusters, provides a single place for IT pros to look at and manage all their Kubernetes clusters, including those running on Microsoft Azure and AWS cloud platforms, with plans to add Google Cloud support in the future.To read this article in full, please click here

Multi-Tenancy Datacenter with NSX EVPN

The data center landscape has radically evolved over the last decade thanks to virtualization.

Before Network Virtualization Overlay (NVO), data centers were limited to 4096 broadcast domains which could be problematic for large data centers to support a multi-tenancy architecture.

Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN) has emerged as one of the most popular network virtualization overlay technologies and has been created to address the scalability issue outlined above.

When VXLAN is used without MP-BGP, it uses a flood and learns behavior to map end-host location and identity. The VXLAN tunneling protocol encapsulates a frame into an IP packet (with a UDP header) and therefore can leverage Equal Cost Multi-Path (ECMP) on the underlay fabric to distribute the traffic between VXLAN Tunneling Endpoints (VTEP).

Multi-Protocol BGP (MP-BGP) Ethernet VPN (EVPN) allows prefixes and mac addresses to be advertised in a data center fabric as it eliminates the flood and learns the behavior of the VXLAN protocol while VXLAN is still being used as an encapsulation mechanism to differentiate the traffic between the tenants or broadcast domains.

A Multi-Tenancy infrastructure allows multiple tenants to share the same computing and networking resources within a data center. As the physical infrastructure is shared, the physical Continue reading

Day Two Cloud 139: Azure Bicep Is (Not) ARM

Today's Day Two Cloud podcast gets into Azure Bicep, a language that IT teams can use to deploy Azure resources in a consistent manner. While Bicep is Azure-specific, it can be useful as part of an Infrastructure-as-Code initiative. Guests Ben Weissman and Rob Sewell explore how Bicep works, discuss use cases, compare it to Terraform, and more.

IBM service aims to secure multicloud operations

IBM is launching a new service to help customers manage their data encryption keys in a hybrid cloud environment. Unified Key Orchestrator lets customers integrate all security key-management systems into one managed service that's backed by Big Blue’s Hardware Security Module. HSM is IBM’s system that protects against physical or logical attacks and has special hardware to perform cryptographic operations and protect keys.Gartner: IT skills shortage hobbles cloud, edge, automation growth Available from IBM Cloud, Unified Key Orchestrator lets customers maintain visibility and control over who has access to their critical data, while running workloads across hybrid or multicloud cloud environments. In addition, with a single, secure, cloud-based  view of an organization’s crypto keys, enterprises can create and revoke keys for their data across multiple clouds. At the same time, companies no longer need to rely on security experts with specialized knowledge of each individual cloud to handle security operations, according to IBM.To read this article in full, please click here

IBM service aims to secure multicloud operations

IBM is launching a new service to help customers manage their data encryption keys in a hybrid cloud environment. Unified Key Orchestrator lets customers integrate all security key-management systems into one managed service that's backed by Big Blue’s Hardware Security Module. HSM is IBM’s system that protects against physical or logical attacks and has special hardware to perform cryptographic operations and protect keys.Gartner: IT skills shortage hobbles cloud, edge, automation growth Available from IBM Cloud, Unified Key Orchestrator lets customers maintain visibility and control over who has access to their critical data, while running workloads across hybrid or multicloud cloud environments. In addition, with a single, secure, cloud-based  view of an organization’s crypto keys, enterprises can create and revoke keys for their data across multiple clouds. At the same time, companies no longer need to rely on security experts with specialized knowledge of each individual cloud to handle security operations, according to IBM.To read this article in full, please click here

Understanding Data Center Fabrics 03: Characteristics Of Data Center Fabrics – Video

In the third installment of this 9-video series, Russ White clarifies exactly what a fabric is, complete with drawings, animations, and live illustrations. From there, you’ll be able to determine what is and is not a fabric. In this lesson, Russ also walks through traffic patterns, tiers, and bandwidth between tiers in data center fabrics. […]

The post Understanding Data Center Fabrics 03: Characteristics Of Data Center Fabrics – Video appeared first on Packet Pushers.

What is NAC and why is it important for network security?

Network Access Control (NAC) is a cybersecurity technique that prevents unauthorized users and devices from entering private networks and accessing sensitive resources. Also known as Network Admission Control, NAC first gained a foothold in the enterprise in the mid-to-late 2000s as a way to manage endpoints through basic scan-and-block techniques.As knowledge workers became increasingly mobile, and as BYOD initiatives spread across organizations, NAC solutions evolved to not only authenticate users, but also to manage endpoints and enforce policies.How NAC works NAC tools detect all devices on the network and provide visibility into those devices. NAC software prevents unauthorized users from entering the network and enforces policies on endpoints to ensure devices comply with network security policies. NAC solutions will, for instance, make sure that the endpoint has up-to-date antivirus and anti-malware protections.To read this article in full, please click here

10 ways IT can navigate the chip shortage

Exacerbated by the pandemic, the chip shortage neared crisis proportions at the start of the year. Network vendors calculated the impact on their businesses in recent earnings reports: Cisco's current product backlog is at nearly $14 billion, Juniper reported a backlog of $1.8 billion, and Arista said that lead times on sales are 50 to 70 weeks.Then Russia invaded Ukraine, putting even more stress on the global supply chain. Ukraine manufactures 70% of the world's neon gas, which is needed for the industrial lasers used in semiconductor manufacturing, according to research firm TrendForce.To read this article in full, please click here

10 ways IT can navigate the chip shortage

Exacerbated by the pandemic, the chip shortage neared crisis proportions at the start of the year. Network vendors calculated the impact on their businesses in recent earnings reports: Cisco's current product backlog is at nearly $14 billion, Juniper reported a backlog of $1.8 billion, and Arista said that lead times on sales are 50 to 70 weeks.Then Russia invaded Ukraine, putting even more stress on the global supply chain. Ukraine manufactures 70% of the world's neon gas, which is needed for the industrial lasers used in semiconductor manufacturing, according to research firm TrendForce.To read this article in full, please click here

Best backup for 7 major databases

There are many options for backing up databases, and what’s best varies from database to database and how it’s delivered. Here are recommendations for seven of them, with a glimpse at how the options were chosen to help inform your decision making.Oracle Oracle has many options for backup, but the official answer for backing Oracle would be Recovery Manager, or RMAN, which is also the name of the actual command that invokes it. Among many options, RMAN supports an image option that can merge older incremental backups into full backups, which would give you multiple recovery points without having to make multiple full backups. That’s an efficient dump and sweep option, but challenge is you need enough disk space to store a full backup and a series of incrementals. If you’re short on disk space, you can also use the SQL command alter database begin backup before you back up and alter database end backup when you’re done. This will allow you to use whatever backup method you choose. Oracle on Windows also integrates with Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS), allowing you to perform hot backups without having to script at all. The RMAN image option with a Continue reading

What is NAC and why is it important for network security?

Network Access Control (NAC) is a cybersecurity technique that prevents unauthorized users and devices from entering private networks and accessing sensitive resources. Also known as Network Admission Control, NAC first gained a foothold in the enterprise in the mid-to-late 2000s as a way to manage endpoints through basic scan-and-block techniques.As knowledge workers became increasingly mobile, and as BYOD initiatives spread across organizations, NAC solutions evolved to not only authenticate users, but also to manage endpoints and enforce policies.How NAC works NAC tools detect all devices on the network and provide visibility into those devices. NAC software prevents unauthorized users from entering the network and enforces policies on endpoints to ensure devices comply with network security policies. NAC solutions will, for instance, make sure that the endpoint has up-to-date antivirus and anti-malware protections.To read this article in full, please click here

BGP Labeled Unicast on Cisco IOS

While researching the BGP RFCs for the Three Dimensions of BGP Address Family Nerd Knobs, I figured out that the BGP Labeled Unicast (BGP-LU, advertising MPLS labels together with BGP prefixes) uses a different address family. So far so good.

Now for the intricate bit: a BGP router might negotiate IPv4 and IPv4-LU address families with a neighbor. Does that mean that it’s advertising every IPv4 prefix twice, once without a label, and once with a label? Should that be the case, how are those prefixes originated and how are they stored in the BGP table?

As always, the correct answer is “it depends”, this time on the network operating system implementation. This blog post describes Cisco IOS behavior, a follow-up one will focus on Arista EOS.

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BGP Labeled Unicast on Cisco IOS

While researching the BGP RFCs for the Three Dimensions of BGP Address Family Nerd Knobs, I figured out that the BGP Labeled Unicast (BGP-LU, advertising MPLS labels together with BGP prefixes) uses a different address family. So far so good.

Now for the intricate bit: a BGP router might negotiate IPv4 and IPv4-LU address families with a neighbor. Does that mean that it’s advertising every IPv4 prefix twice, once without a label, and once with a label? Should that be the case, how are those prefixes originated and how are they stored in the BGP table?

As always, the correct answer is “it depends”, this time on the network operating system implementation. This blog post describes Cisco IOS behavior, a follow-up one will focus on Arista EOS.

Read more …
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